


Breaking Up For Dummies

by frubeto



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Fluff and Humor, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-05-07 22:22:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14680664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frubeto/pseuds/frubeto
Summary: "So we break up.”“What?”“It’s easy. The program won’t allow relationships, so we break up, stage a fight, fill out the necessary paperwork, you say you need to get away from me or something and voilà: you can go.”Hugh only stared at him in disbelief.





	Breaking Up For Dummies

**Author's Note:**

> Will I ever write something serious again? Who knows. Meanwhile: this.

“So we break up.”

 

“What?”

 

“It’s easy. The program won’t allow relationships, so we break up, stage a fight, fill out the necessary paperwork, you say you need to get away from me or something and voilà: you can go.”

 

Hugh only stared at him in disbelief, so he continued.

 

“I mean it. You know this is my dream, doing my research on this ship, getting to put it into practice. Well, the circumstances are shit,” he added, before Hugh could remind him how much he had hated it in the beginning. “But _still._ You made a sacrifice because of my work and you deserve the same.”

 

“Paul, I turned down one other job offer when I transferred. So we could be together. Because that’s what matters to me. This is were I want to be. With you.”

 

He took both of Paul’s hands in his and Paul smiled at his sweetness. But he wasn’t fooled.

 

“I saw your face when you realized our docking at Starbase 5 coincides with the sign up – don’t lie to me. How badly do you want this?”

 

Hugh remained silent. But his expression slowly changed from blank refusal into one that told Paul exactly how right he had been.

 

 

*

 

 

“How do you suggest we do this?” Hugh asked, sitting down on the bed. “It’s not like we’re overly vocal about out relationship.”

 

Paul returned from the bathroom and picked up his PADD on his way to join him.

 

“Yes, but let’s change that. Make people aware we’re an item and that it’s not going well.”

 

Okay, that was odd. Paul usually didn’t think much of letting other people in on their personal problems.

 

“We can’t be that obvious though,” he tried. “Because we wouldn’t be, if this were real. And it can’t affect the job.”

 

“So,” Paul reasoned, taking Hugh’s doubts as constructive criticism, “we need to do it publicly, but off duty.”

 

“Like somewhere in the corridors?” Hugh suggested, but Paul shook his head.

 

“We can’t be sure that there’s enough people around. What about the mess hall?”

 

“That’s a lot of people,” Hugh noted. But he had to admit that the thought was more exciting than terrifying. He’d been in a few theater productions before Starfleet and he kind of missed it. “But we can do that.”

 

He wasn’t too sure about Paul’s skills in that field, however since he was the one suggesting this, he had to know what he was doing.

 

“Or around medbay. Gossip spreads there like-”

 

“-a disease?” Paul helpfully supplied and Hugh only shot him a look.

 

“Let’s start this off in the mess hall, get some rumors started, and then take the big fight to medbay where there’s not as many people watching.”

 

“Good,” Paul praised. “Do you want me to throw something at you?”

 

Hugh paused.

 

“...I think you’re having way too much fun with this.”

 

Paul looked up from where he was taking notes on his PADD.

 

“No, you’re not having enough fun! Come on, use your imagination, what do you want to do?”

 

“Well, sometimes I dream of strangling you and throwing you out an airlock but both Starfleet and the oath I made are keeping me from it,” Hugh deadpanned.

 

Paul went back to his PADD, sighing dramatically, and added ‘ _throw Paul out of airlock_ ’ to his list.

 

“We’re still brainstorming, so there’s no such thing as bad ideas, _I guess_.”

 

He smiled, knowing that Hugh was being difficult on purpose and secretly enjoying this. Then something else crossed his mind.

 

“Wait, would it make a difference if we were married? Maybe we’ve been looking at the whole problem from the wrong angle.”

 

“I’m not marrying you out of necessity,” came Hugh’s immediate reply, and Paul couldn’t help but put on an affronted expression.

 

“Oh, but breaking up with me is fine?”

 

“You suggested it!”

 

They were both grinning now and Paul scooted closer to Hugh, giving him a small kiss before leaning on his shoulder to get more comfortable.

 

“What about an affair?”

 

Hugh’s chest moved with silent laughter at that.

 

“No one on this ship would be interested in sleeping with either of us.”

 

“Speak for yourself,” Paul joked as he sat up just enough to face Hugh. “Also, seriously?! Have you _seen_ how Ensign K’ar looks at you?”

 

He seemed genuinely surprised for a moment.

  
“I’m pretty sure out species aren’t even compatible. And I don’t want to get them tangled up in this mess. Or anyone else for that matter. Even if we told them. It wouldn’t be right.”

 

“Yeah, sorry, I didn’t think that through. None of us would do that.”

 

Smiling softly, Hugh wrapped his arms around Paul’s middle and pulled him back into their previous position. Then he took the PADD.

 

“Let’s see,” he said, reading through Paul’s notes. “We have three weeks until we arrive at Starbase 5. Let me arrange those in three categories and...” He trailed off while he moved the ideas around in the document, giving each segment it’s own headline. When he was satisfied, he turned the PADD for Paul to see.

 

“This is how we’ll do it.”

 

 

*

 

 

**week one: getting the rumors started**

 

 

Paul entered the mess hall 12 minutes late.

It was their usual lunch date, one of the days where their shifts allowed it, and also the day they had chosen to be first of their drama in three acts. He shot Hugh an apologetic look as he passed him on the way to the replicators and joined him moments later with a tray.

He felt weird.

He was already second-guessing every move he made, unsure of the protocol, and even though he knew that him and Hugh having lunch together was a common sight, and no one had any reason to be suspicious, he felt watched. And once they were done, it would only get worse.

Maybe this was a stupid idea.

He was, after all, a terrible liar, and no philosophical loophole about how this wasn’t ‘lying but acting, right? Just acting like a giant dick – I do that all day’ could change that. Or maybe that wasn’t his real problem.

 

“You okay?”

 

Paul looked up and Hugh apparently took his expression as a clear no, because the follow-up question came right away.

 

“What’s wrong?”

 

He sighed and stalled for more time to think about his wording by stabbing a carrot with his fork. Eventually, he settled on,

 

“What if this works too well?”

 

Which did not seem to make sense to Hugh.

 

“What if we end up hating each other by the end of this. What if this makes us realize how badly we fit together.”

 

“This is hardly the weirdest thing we’ve been through together, I don’t think it could bring us apart.”

 

But Paul didn’t look convinced, so he added,

 

“You came up with this, and you have every right to call it off the minute you don’t feel comfortable anymore. You tell me, and we stop, okay? But you should also know that nothing you say or do in the next three weeks will change how I feel about you. How much I love you.”

 

Paul remained silent and made that creepy face where he focused on a spot right behind Hugh’s eyes so that he was neither staring at him, nor through him, and ever so slightly drew his eyebrows together. It meant he was thinking. Hugh had gotten used to it.

 

“Okay,” Paul said, once he was done staring, and Hugh smiled.

 

“Okay.”

 

They continued to eat in silence, Paul reading something on his PADD, every now and then picking it up to type, and Hugh focusing on his pasta. When he finished, he took a careful look around. It had gotten even fuller in the time they had been here, most chairs occupied, no empty tables. Good.

 

“Ready?” he asked, and Paul glanced up at him out of the corner of his eye before giving a single nod and returning his attention to the PADD.

 

“Then this starts now,” Hugh whispered.

 

He stood up brusquely and let his chair squeak back loudly, causing Paul’s head to snap up out of reflex, as well as most other heads around them. But only Paul got to see the look on his face change gradually into something harder as he grabbed his tray and shook his head at Paul before storming out.

 

“Hugh…?” Paul called for good measure, neither expecting an answer nor getting one.

 

 

*

 

 

Two days later, Paul was in engineering, absorbed in a particularly ugly bit of code, when he looked up to clear his head and noticed that Hugh had texted him. He unlocked his PADD.

 

‘ _Text me when you read this. I’m gonna call you like 30 times then. Don’t answer until someone notices.’_

 

Paul almost smiled before he remembered himself and sent a _‘k’_ , trying to look disinterested. This must have been a spontaneous idea of Hugh’s, and it was pretty good. Subtle, but effective. They had been dropping hints like this every now and then when they were together, and so far, it seemed to be going well. Hugh was evidently having fun.

Paul tried to go back to his code, but almost immediately his PADD started vibrating with an incoming call.

He ignored it.

 

After what felt like forever it went to voicemail and he relaxed. He hadn’t realized how stressful actively ignoring a call could be. He’d usually either pick it up as soon as he noticed or never even hear it in the first place when he was busy. But now he knew it was there and he couldn’t do anything about it and it was going to drive him crazy if someone wouldn’t soon put an end to it.

Perhaps he’d praised this idea prematurely.

 

There was only a minute of peace before the ringing started again, and this time Paul rejected it, harrumphing. He didn’t have the nerve to do this again just yet. Thankfully, when he looked up, Burnham was at his station, eyeing his PADD. That was fast.

 

“I finished the calculations you asked for,” she said, handing him a data chip and telling him about a problem with the data he should probably take a look at as it could affect future simulations, but she trailed off and her eyes fell on his PADD again when it resumed vibrating on his desk. He closed his eyes in annoyance.

 

“Are you not going to answer that?”

 

“No,” he simply said.

 

“What if it’s im-”

 

“If it _is_ important,” he interrupted her, “he can use the comm system.”

 

She considered the vibrating PADD for a bit longer and he was sure she could see Hugh’s name from where she stood. Then she nodded once.

 

“I’ll go check on Tilly’s progress.”

 

And she was gone.

And the PADD stopped.

 

He tried once more to make sense of the code in front of him, but Hugh wasn’t done yet. There were only seconds between the calls now. Paul shook his head. If this weren’t previously agreed on, he’d probably be livid right now. Then again, if Paul were actually ignoring his calls, Hugh wouldn’t be happy either.

But since Burnham had officially noticed, he was now allowed to pick up. And he was going to make the most of it. Taking one last cautious look around the lab, he touched the button to answer.

 

“If you call me one more time I swear I’m going to murder you in your sleep tonight and use your body as fertilizer.”

 

It was sharp, pronounced very clearly, the way he always did when he was irritated. It had nothing on Hugh’s voice, which could become little more than a hiss, but it sure did get the point across.

 

He waited a few seconds for Hugh to retaliate, but when nothing came, he disconnected the call and threw the PADD down again. It lit up with a new message instead.

 

‘ _That was harsh.’_

 

‘ _Sorry. Too much?’_

 

‘ _No, you’re good. I just sometimes forget how scary you can be when you’re pissed.’_

 

 

*

 

 

By the end of the week, Tilly had apparently had enough. She creeped up on Paul during a quiet shift in engineering.

 

“What is it?” he asked without taking his eyes off his screen. He could see her reflection, looking caught, but not panicked enough to back off.

 

“I… wanted to ask if everything is okay?” she said quietly, “With you and… Culber?”

 

He turned around and stared at her.

 

“I’m sorry. And you don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to, it’s just that people have been talking...”

 

“Talking,” he echoed, without any intonation, really, but it still prompted her to continue.

 

“They say you’ve been fighting, and he _hasn’t_ been down here in a while, so...”

 

Paul had to suppress a smile and couldn’t answer right away. This was going exactly as planned.

 

“I fail to see how this is any of your business, cadet.”

 

 

*

 

 

**week two: breakup**

 

 

Paul was dying.

He was already on his second shift today and there had been a killer headache crawling along his scull for at least two hours now, slowly devouring his brain cells. It had already caused the tension in the lab to rise, and when the simulation failed a ninth time, he only barely stopped himself from growling and wrenched open the drawers of his station. Didn’t he have a stash of painkillers down here somewhere? Or had Hugh confiscated those? He didn’t remember. He dug through all the stuff in, on, and around his station but came up empty. So he grabbed his PADD, let himself fall down onto his chair and sent a message to Hugh.

 

‘ _Are you okay with a change of plans? I know we said tomorrow, but I might have to come in anyway now.’_

 

Hugh replied immediately.

 

‘ _What’s wrong?’_

 

Missing the point, typically.

 

‘ _Headache.’_

 

‘ _You sure you’re up to this, then?’_

 

‘ _I’m already in a bad mood – that’s only a plus, right?’_

 

‘ _Alright. I’ll be here.’_

 

He let the PADD fall onto the table and regretted it instantly for the loud clatter echoing through the room. Tilly looked over alarmedly from her station. Ignoring her, he put his head in his hands, trying to massage away the painful spots even though he knew fully well that it wouldn’t help. And it didn’t.

Sickbay it was, then.

 

“I’ll be right back,” he mumbled as he passed Tilly and Burnham, and made his way across the ship. They were obviously still in day mode, judging by the obnoxiously bright lights in the hallways. Paul hated it. Why couldn’t they just always keep it dimmed? Then he wouldn’t have to walk around now with his eyes mostly closed, relying only on his memory of the ship layout.

 

By the time he arrived in sickbay, he felt like his head had expanded like a balloon in a vacuum chamber and someone filled it with a bag of ploomeks. He had to lean on the doorframe for support, where Hugh spotted him not long after.

 

“Lieutenant Stamets. What can I do for you?” he greeted him, in the fakest polite voice Paul had ever heard him use, so it registered more as ‘What the fuck do you want.’

Was Hugh faking that fake voice?

His head was gonna explode.

 

“I am in pain. This is the place to go, isn’t it?” Paul shot back, but it could have been smoother if he didn’t have to squint against the equally bright light in sickbay. Which maniac designed this?

 

Meanwhile Hugh led him towards a biobed.

 

“Headache?” he asked, forcing him to sit, and Paul only mm-ed in response.

 

“Let’s see.”

 

It was the only warning he got before the shrill whirring sound of the medical tricorder drilled it’s way through his ears into his brain. He tried to swat it away. But Hugh was insistent.

 

“What are you even _doing_?”

 

“I can’t just give out medication randomly, you’re aware.”

 

“Come on, you know I get these headaches, just stop and give me that stuff I usually get and I can be gone.”

 

He didn’t stop.

 

“You’ve been having them a lot recently. I want to make sure there’s nothing else going on.”

 

Paul couldn’t even find it in him to listen.

 

“It’s stored right over there, second drawer from the top, you only need to-”

 

The high-pitched sound got impossibly louder and his sentence trailed off in a groan. At least now Hugh was finally obeying, turning off the tricorder and softly apologizing to him before calling a nurse to get the appropriate hypospray.

 

Or he had simply finished whatever he had been doing. That was probably more likely. In the end, it didn’t matter.

 

“Do you want the rest of the day off?” Hugh whispered, and Paul was grateful for the offer, but he’d be fine once he got those painkillers – he hoped – so he shook his head no. Or would have, if Hugh hadn’t taken hold of the side of his face and prevented him from making such a fatal mistake.

 

“No,” he said instead and let his forehead rest against Hugh’s shoulder while he massaged his neck. This was nice. And it would be even nicer if he could finally get rid of this headache. Why was this taking so long?

 

“Make it stop,” he murmured against the white fabric in front of his face, and only moments later he felt the cool touch of a hypospray against his skin and the soft bliss of painkillers hitting his bloodstream.

 

And the cold breeze of sharpening perception. He sat up straighter. Detached himself from Hugh’s hold and took a quick glance around the room. Well. That was unprofessional. But they were about to get even less professional, so… Whatever.

 

“Better?” Hugh asked.

 

He nodded, and when even that didn’t make his head explode anymore, he let out a satisfied breath. Now this could begin. He prepared to get back into his asshole-state-of-mind while Hugh put something away to his right and picked up his PADD.

 

“Next time, please get here earlier and I can give you something milder. I don’t want you to come begging for relief.”

 

Paul saw a chance and took it.

 

“That’s not what you said last night.”

 

The look on Hugh’s face was pure and utter shock. And it was fair, given that there was at least one nurse close enough to have heard every word. He’d apologize for that later.

 

“Lieutenant!”

 

Hugh wanted to throw so much more at him for that, but it was the only coherent thing he could manage as he spotted nurses Johnson and Sheng only a few feet away and he might have actually started to blush. Not least because it was, technically, true.

 

“What, was that unprofessional of me?” Paul challenged. “I thought you wanted everyone to know what we do in our free time.”

 

Hugh sucked in a breath. But Paul wasn’t finished.

 

“You’ll have to be a little more clear with me, I _really_ suck at this,” he continued, perfectly misquoting an argument they never had. Or did have, actually. Very early in their relationship. Only not… like that.

 

Hugh exhaled slowly and shook his head, calming himself.

 

“I’m not doing this on duty.”

 

It earned a scoff from Paul. Who hopped off the biobed and made two steps towards the exit before stopping again to say,

 

“If you want someone else then go find them. Don’t try to make it me. You either get this – or you _don’t_.”

 

And while he left, Hugh was momentarily caught between fury and laughter, but managed to turn the escaping chuckle into a sarcastic one.

 

“Actually,” he decided, turning calmly towards the other doctor on shift, who had by now also become aware of the situation, “Doctor, is it okay if I prepone my break to _right now_?”

 

“Sure.”

 

Only then did he storm after Paul and, once he caught up, shoved him a few steps down the corridor. Roughly, but without any force behind it. He did not need a lawsuit for assault of a fellow officer.

 

“What the _fuck_ is wrong with you?”

 

“I’m sorry,” Paul started, intending to follow it up with a clever rhetorical question, but Hugh interrupted him.

 

“Yeah, you should be.”

 

He inwardly cackled at being able to give Paul a taste of his own medicine. He’d pulled stuff like this on unsuspecting ensigns often enough and by the looks of it, he hated being on the receiving end. He glared at him.

 

“Oh wow, how witty of you. I sure would miss-”

 

“Don’t give me that ‘take me or leave me’ crap, we both know that’s not what’s going on.”

 

“Please, enlighten me.”

 

And Hugh blanked.

Then he realized why Paul had brought up that old argument. It was easy. It was available. It was believable. They had to sound like they had been fighting all this time, and this was probably the smoothest solution. Alright. Phrasing things the worst way possible? Hugh could do that, too. He took a step towards Paul.

 

“You’re trying to drive me away because you’re too much of a coward to admit that you can’t do this. Because the mighty Paul Stamets is infallible. Or because you feel like this might not work out and you’d rather have control over it like you control everything else. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just so much easier to pretend we never happened and go back to isolating yourself from every goddamn person in the quadrant. Well, sorry I’m an inconvenience to you.”

 

Paul only stared at him.

 

“Are you done?”

 

Since he intended to wait for Hugh to actually answer, which he didn’t, they ended up staring at each other for a long moment before he gave in and continued,

 

“Look, if you can’t handle the fact that I’m smarter than you, I don’t blame you. Most people don’t, it’s-”

 

“Oh, is this gonna be the ‘I’m Paul Stamets, genius extraordinaire’-speech? Spare me. Being intelligent doesn’t actually excuse you from being a decent human being, you know?”

 

“You mean like yourself? Because you’re such a saint.”

 

“Only compared to you.”

 

Paul shook his head.

 

“Being in a relationship doesn’t actually excuse you from respecting me, you know?” he parroted back.

 

“I see how it is. Soon as I stop treating you like royalty you get to be a prick but god forbid I give you shit for it. That’s a bit of a double standard you’ve got going on there, darling.”

 

It was unusual to hear Hugh talk like that, and it was even more unusual to hear him call Paul ‘darling’. Because he hated it.

 

“You think I’m that vain?”

 

“No, I think you’re being an asshole. Like you’ve always been.”

 

Paul huffed.

 

“You knew what you were signing up for.”

 

“Yeah, well, I’m signing out.”

 

There were gasps coming from somewhere in sickbay, but neither of them had time to find out who it was.

 

“Sure,” Paul said, and Hugh took a moment longer to glare at him before breaking into a condescending smile and once again deliberately failed to notice his sarcastic tone.

 

“Great. Then we’re agreed.”

 

Pulling up a document he prepared earlier, he held out his PADD challengingly.

 

“I’m gonna need your signature.”

 

They hadn’t actually planned do to this now, and Paul seemed momentarily overwhelmed, but Hugh thought it was fitting, and certainly great payback for Paul’s horrible sex joke earlier.

Only now he had to stall for some time when Paul wasn’t reacting straightaway.

 

“Right. Just like I thought, then. Little drama queen begging for attention until I come around and tell you how pretty you are and how much my world only revolves around you.”

 

That got Paul moving.

 

“Gimme that,” he snapped, throwing an incredulous look at Hugh and snatching the PADD from him. He meant to just sign the damn thing and then walk off arrogantly, but when he held the pen in his hand the gravity of the situation sank in and he hesitated. This wasn’t only theater anymore. This had consequences. This was a legitimate SIPR_3142AT from, fully filled out, with Hugh’s signature already in place. He wasn’t sure if he would send it directly, but they _had_ agreed to this, so it was possible that this exact moment marked the end of their official relationship. The hand holding the pen started shaking and he quickly grabbed the PADD with it. Shit. He glanced up at Hugh. From far away it might still look like he was furious, but from this close Paul could clearly see his unease. He imagined that if he could, he’d give the ‘we’ll do nothing you’re not comfortable with’-speech again and he was glad to have that option.

 

“I...”

 

Shaking his head he got a glimpse of sickbay though, where they had apparently accumulated an audience. He took a deep breath. He couldn’t back down now, it would only make things more complicated. And he’d promised.

 

Hugh watched in fascination as Paul pieced his giant-pain-in-the-ass-persona back together bit by bit and signed the form as if it was a quarterly report on resources. Then he took a step forward, and another one, until they were terribly close and Hugh had to fight hard against an instinct to flinch back as Paul pressed the PADD flat against his chest, eyes shining dark. Because this, this was scary. This was the Paul Stamets that made grown officers cry.

 

“Fuck you,” he snarled, and there was a shudder running down Hugh’s spine while he watched him leave. So much he almost forgot to catch the PADD at his chest.

 

Then Paul turned back, after only having made it a few meters down the corridor, and took the PADD again.

 

“What…?”

 

“I’m adding a request for separate quarters because _I don’t want to see your face again_.”

 

 

*

 

 

When Paul returned to engineering, he felt worse than before. Sure, the headache was gone and he was thankful, but instead he now felt like crying. It had been a while since he actually hadn’t been confident he could make it through the rest of his shift. Normally, he’d just focus on work and everything else would leave his mind as long as he was occupied, but right now that didn’t seem possible. He didn’t even know why this hit him so hard, he realized that everything they had said was staged, and had nothing to do with how they were really feeling, and still. The moment he’d stop concentrating on not crying there would be tears rolling down his face like in a dramatic holovid scene. Tilly was already watching him worriedly. Which was when he remembered that this was, after all, not much different than a holo. Crying on shift probably violated their rule of it not affecting the job, but it did serve the purpose. So he braced himself on his desk with both arms and swallowed his pride.

 

 

Tilly failed to catch Michael’s intention to leave her station and talk to Stamets ahead of time, and was unable to hold her back subtly now. She could only hope it was important. He was in a bad mood, and it was never a good idea to bother him.

 

“Lieutenant-”

 

He looked up, surprised, and Tilly sucked in a sharp breath as he wiped away the wetness on his face.

 

“What.”

 

“I… Sorry, is everything alright?”

 

Burnham had lowered her voice, but Tilly could still hear them, as well as a few other officers around, and Stamets was well aware, it seemed, because he quickly gathered himself together again.

 

Which was a relief, considering that Michael had probably no idea how to handle a crying Lieutenant Stamets.

 

“Yes. What do you want?”

 

She explained, and he tried his best to follow and give appropriate orders even though it was clear his mind was elsewhere. She wondered what had happened to throw him off like this. It had to be Culber, right? He’d come from sickbay, and the two of them weren’t on the best of terms at the moment. Her heart twinged in sympathy as he dismissed Michael and strode towards the cultivation bay just a little too fast, his tricorder in hand. This couldn’t go on like this. Whatever it was between them, they had to work it out, and she’d personally help if she had to, because they so obviously cared deeply about each other, and it was unbearable to watch them destroy that over something that might very well be trivial.

 

It was only after Michael returned to her station that Tilly saw the text from nurse Sheng.

 

‘ _holy shit culber &stamets just had a fight, i’ve never seen them like this, I think they broke up?? you better be careful :o’_

 

 

*

 

 

A few days later when his request for separate quarters got approved, Paul wordlessly put his PADD with the message down in front of Hugh and sank in a chair.

 

“I’m gonna have to pack my bags.”

 

Hugh sighed and picked up the PADD.

 

“It’s only a few more days.”

 

“...until we’re not even on the same ship anymore!”

 

“Yeah, I know, this is really hard for you,” Hugh said sarcastically, and Paul froze.

 

“What?”

 

The PADD clattered back on the table as Hugh got up, clenching his jaw.

  
“You sold this to me as a sacrifice on your part. But it looks like you’re having the time of your life.”

 

“What?”

 

“How. Is this a sacrifice for you.”

 

Paul stood up as well, slightly bewildered, but mostly affronted.

 

“Because I love you. You’re gonna be doing what you always wanted to do and I’m stuck here with my mushrooms and I’ll spend the next six months wondering of you’re out there finally realizing that I don’t deserve you because you’re not here to remind me of the opposite. I’m sacrificing my sanity!”

 

There was a second of silence, deafening in the wake of their anger, until he realized what was happening and let out a long breath. His voice was calm when he said,

 

“I’m sorry. That was unfair.”

 

And the atmosphere shifted so fast it met Hugh like a slap across the face.

 

“No, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have-”

 

More quietly he asked, “But is that how you really feel?”

 

“No,” Paul immediately denied, then, “Maybe.”

 

He let himself fall on the bed and closed his eyes.

 

“It’s hard to turn this off.”

 

Hugh understood. Careful not to disturb the fragile moment, he walked over to Paul and sat down beside him.

 

“Sometimes I don’t even have to remind myself to be angry at you,” he continued once Hugh had settled down, “I just am. And I don’t want to be.”

 

He turned, and his forehead found its way onto Hugh’s shoulder.

 

“I don’t want our actual relationship to suffer from our fictional breakup.”

 

Hugh nodded.

 

“Changing quarters is big. It takes away our last retreat. If we can’t even see each other in here then this breakup is taking away all the time that we should be spending enjoying each other’s company before I’m gone.”

 

Sighing, Paul moved again, sitting closer so he could lean fully against Hugh, suddenly needing the closeness.

 

“You wanna call it off?”

 

“Not if you don’t.”

 

“Okay.”

 

Paul smiled, and turned his head until he could kiss the side of Hugh’s neck.

 

“Then how about some of that enjoying you talked about.”

 

 

*

 

 

Tilly finished her evening run in a few seconds above her normal time. She was exhausted, and only wanted to get into the shower and then her bed, but when she saw Stamets plod through the corridor carrying a large box, she stopped.

 

“Lieutenant?”

 

“Tilly,” he greeted, otherwise not acknowledging her.

 

“What are you doing here?” she asked, catching up and falling in step with him, even though she had a pretty good idea what was going on. Still, she’d rather not wrongly assume and make things worse. There were only a few people up and down the hallway, but their stares and whispers were clearly enough to make him uncomfortable. If it were only the two of them, she’d be sure he wouldn’t give a shit about what she thought about him.

 

“I’m on the way to my quarters.”

 

“Your quarters are that way.”

 

He paused for a moment, and she almost worried he was going to ignore her, before he answered in a quiet but professional voice,

 

“You’ll find that those are now Dr. Culber’s quarters.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“Yes,” he said, and pushed past her to the door on their right.

 

She briefly wondered if she would have to pick a side now, since she had to deal with both of them and didn’t particularly want to get on either one’s bad side. But they wouldn’t let this affect their usual professionalism, right?

 

“Well, if you need anything, Burnham and my quarters are just over there,” she offered, and he stopped and turned in the doorway to give her a small smile.

 

“Thank you.”

 

 

*

 

 

**week three: finish line**

 

“Computer, locate Doctor Culber.”

 

“Doctor Culber is in maintenance 3, deck 5.”

 

Huh. That was weird. The maintenance rooms were mostly unused unless there was a technical difficulty that had to be accessed manually from somewhere. And even then, it was engineering and not medical staff that would be found there. But maybe a medical emergency had brought Culber to that area? So Ensign K’ar made their way to the turbolift, planning to find Culber first and tell him to also get Stamets. He seemed the more reasonable out of the two. Although with the way things were looking, it was possible they weren't even talking at the moment. And the captain had made clear he wanted both of them, as soon as possible, in his ready room. Then finding Culber and go looking for Stamets afterward as well it was.

 

The turbolift doors opened and K’ar stepped out, preparing themself to face Culber. They really hoped they wouldn’t be walking into a medical emergency. They would only be interfering. But that was the least of their worries. They had tried to keep away from Culber in the last time, asking for someone else to do their physicals. Not because he was incompetent, quite the contrary. He’d probably put two and two together and interpret their elevated heart rate for what it was. They did not need the extra embarrassment that entailed. It was bad enough as it was.

 

K’ar reached the correct corridor and slowed down to read the labels on the doors. Maintenance 3 was at their left and they walked in, ready to deal with Culber and his beautiful face and tell him in the politest and least awkward way possible that the captain requested his presence and – Oh.

 

This was not a medical emergency.

 

Stamets and Culber each made an abrupt step backwards at the sound of the door opening, resulting in a loud crash as Stamets hit the cupboard behind him. All three of them stood shellshocked for a second, maybe two, before Culber recovered first. He cleared his throat and adjusted his uniform while Stamets let out a long, hissed, “shit”.

 

“Ensign K’ar. How can I help you.”

 

“I erm...”

  
So much for ‘least awkward’.

 

It’s not as if they had been hoping for them to break up. Not exactly. But they also hadn’t looked forward to catching them in a situation like this.

 

Stamets was now also recollecting himself, breathing out and pressing his lips in a thin line, so K’ar decided they had to muster up at least some professionalism.

 

“The captain wants to see you. Both of you, actually. I apologize, I-”

 

They let the sentence unfinished and closed their mouth, sure it would only do more harm than good.

 

“We’ll just… be a minute,” Stamets said, holding eye contact, and K’ar only nodded under the intensity of it.

 

As they stepped back to let the doors close, they heard him mutter,

 

“This is going to be shipwide gossip within the hour.”

 

And he wasn’t wrong with that.

 

 

*

 

 

Lorca entered his ready room without preamble.

 

“I assume you know what this is about. I received the paperwork. Is this going to be a problem?”

 

“No, sir,” Paul replied steadily, at the same time that Hugh said, “Definitely.”

 

Paul’s head snapped up to face him in perfect imitation of his own behavior. Hugh had to give him that, he had been better at this than he’d at first expected. He was impressed. Lorca shook his head in annoyance.

 

“You figure this out, then. I don’t care _what’s_ happening between you, but I need both of you in top form.”

 

“Sir,” Hugh started, to keep Lorca from dismissing them prematurely, and took a moment to think about what exactly to say. Paul was still staring at him. “I understand we’re docking at Starbase 5 in a few days?”

 

“Yeah,” Lorca drawled, wary of where this was going.

 

“I’m requesting transfer. This… _situation_ compromises my ability to perform adequately on this vessel. There is a Starfleet medical program being launched on Starbase 5 and I feel like I can be of more use there, if you’ll allow it. I apologize that this is on short notice, but I would of course work with the CMO to find an acceptable replacement for my post.”

 

When Lorca didn’t react right away, which wasn’t like him, Hugh felt the need to also play the ethics card, adding,

 

“I’m a doctor. I never signed up to fight on the front line of a war in the first place.”

 

 _I’m only here because I followed this dumbass and his mushrooms_ , he didn’t say. Maybe Lorca heard it anyway.

 

“Fine,” he decided, “That’ll solve it.” and Hugh was already starting to plan out how he was going to thank Paul for this.

 

“Send me everything and I’ll sign off on it.”

 

“Thank you, Sir.”

 

“Dismissed.”

 

 

*

 

 

A few days and one long awaited flying-glassware-involving incident later, Paul sat in the mess hall, alone. It was the middle of gamma shift, so the rest of the crew was either asleep or working. Except for him, who had stayed after beta because he felt they had been onto something, and Hugh, apparently, who walked in at that moment and smiled when he realized there was no one else. He got a cup of coffee and a bowl of chocolate pudding from the replicator and was about to sit with him when Tilly and Burnham entered. Right, those two had stayed behind with him. Throwing him an apologizing look, Hugh smoothly caught himself and went to sit at the other end of the room instead.

 

“Okay,” Tilly sighed, taking in the situation. Then she raised her voice, “This is an intervention.”

 

And all three of them looked at her in confusion.

 

“Doctor Culber will be gone tomorrow. Do you really want to part ways fighting?”

 

Paul shot a glance at Hugh, wondering for a moment why she even knew about that, but he vaguely remembered him telling him about one of his nurses striking up a friendship with Tilly, so gossip had probably found it’s way.

 

“If necessary.”

 

Tilly huffed in frustration, but she couldn’t have expected anything else.

 

“I know you are both superior officers, and your personal lives should not concern me, but they do. Because you’re also two people I care about who are only hurting each other by being this stubborn and I can’t just stand by and watch it happen.” She walked over to Paul. “You should at least _talk_.”

 

When he didn’t make any move to do so, she plopped down onto the chair across from him.

 

“He’ll be gone for _six months_. How does that make you feel?”

 

Paul swallowed hard. He knew she was onto something, even if she wasn’t aware of the real reasons why. He needed to keep up the façade, though.

 

“It’s a relief,” he deadpanned.

 

“I don’t believe that. I know K’ar caught you two-”

 

She stopped herself, thankfully.

 

“You’re out of line, cadet.”

 

He stood up and returned his tray, but when he made to leave, Burnham wordlessly stepped in his way. He tried to stare her down, but she didn’t budge.

 

“Tilly’s right.”

 

“I have work to do. _We_ have work to do.”

 

“We decided 30 minutes ago that we’ve hit a dead end.”

 

“You’re staying until you’ve talked and made up,” came Tilly’s voice from behind him. “Or until we reach Starbase 5.”

 

He turned around and glared at her instead. She had moved to Hugh’s table, which gave him the chance to unnoticedly throw a questioning look past her. Hugh shrugged. So they were humoring them.

 

“Sit or I’ll tell Culber what you said in the cultivation bay last week,” Burnham threatened, and he rolled his eyes at her but sat, crossing his arms and leaning back.

 

“This is going to be a fun 8 hours.”

 

But Tilly was satisfied, and she and Burnham got their own dinner, sitting at a table by the door, which gave them just enough space to chat without being heard while still effectively blocking the exit. Hugh went back to his pudding, ignoring Paul, but he was clearly suppressing a smile at the determination of their fellow officers.

 

They remained like that for a long time, before Hugh finished his pudding and only had his coffee to occupy himself with and Paul decided they might as well use this opportunity to talk about the real issue.

 

“I’m scared,” he said, and hoped Hugh would catch on. He didn’t.

 

“How I feel about you leaving. I’m scared,” he explained. “What you said was right. It would be so easy to loose myself in my work without you here, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to be with you. Very much.”

 

He sighed, waiting for a reaction, but none came.

 

“I know we already talked about this but I need you to know.”

 

Hugh still wasn’t answering or even changing his expression and it was starting to make him twitchy. He continued anyway.

 

“Promise me if you come back and I act as if I don’t need you – hit me over the head with something until I realize what an idiot I’m being.”

 

“Gladly. Would you prefer a bottle of wine? Or a steel beam?”

 

“I mean it.”

 

Hugh shifted to look at something over Paul’s shoulder, before asking,

 

“Can Tilly lip-read?”

 

And Paul suddenly got why he had been reluctant to answer. They were probably watching them like hawks from their table, waiting for either a conversation or a physical conflict to start.

 

“Burnham can.”

 

Hugh seemed to consider that for a moment, before coming to the conclusion that they had no reason to keep their charade up any longer. Everything was settled for the coming day, and if they got back on friendly terms now, it would be easier to sell their reconciliation later.

 

“I don’t want to leave you alone out here, too.”

 

Paul smiled.

 

“I think these two have proven to be looking out for me,” he said, sarcastically, but they were both glad to know that in an actual wort-case-scenario, they wouldn’t be alone.

 

“Please be careful.”

 

He nodded, and they fell into a silence that wasn’t awkward, but not fully comfortable either.

 

“I should apologize,” Hugh broke it first, “for everything I said. It was exaggerated, and I didn’t mean it. None of it. Not when we first had those arguments and even less so now.”

 

“It’s okay. It’s not like I didn’t throw some low blows myself.”

 

“What do you mean, you were just being you.”

 

Offended, Paul opened his mouth, but didn’t get to say anything before Hugh cut him off with a shake of his head.

 

“You were infuriating. And if you ever decide to act like that again without a very good reason, then I _am_ going to leave.”

 

“Fair enough.”

 

“And I do understand perfectly now why we usually keep this as private as possible. The constant gossiping made me crazy. I felt like I was in a very strange episode of _Captain Sexy_.”

 

Paul grinned.

 

“It was all worth it for Saru’s face when you told him you’d rather _choke eating your own sock_ than deliberately spend more time with me.”

 

They both laughed at the memory and Hugh took hold of his hand across the table.

 

“I’m gonna miss you.”

 

Paul nodded in agreement, but said,

 

“It’s only six months. You’ll be doing fun science stuff. I’ll be doing fun science stuff. We’ll barely notice the time passing. And then I make myself indispensable to Discovery and demand you transfer back.”

 

“Of course,” Hugh mocked, but Paul let it pass in favour of asking,

 

“Should we, I don’t know, hug to signal that we’ve officially made up?”

 

The only answer was a smirk, then Hugh stood up and walked around the table and Paul barely had enough time to get to his own feet before he wrapped his arms around him. He closed his eyes. Breathed in. Smiled. Cuddled closer so he could feel the vibrations when Hugh spoke.

 

“What _did_ you say in the cultivation bay last week?”

 

“You’ll never know,” he stage-whispered.

 

And over Hugh’s shoulder he got a glimpse of Tilly and Burnham high-fiving.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is less edited than I'd like it to be but screw that because it's already way past the deadline. 7k words is just too damn much.


End file.
